So much better than Instagram! Pierre-Auguste Renoir invited 14 friends to lunch one summer–several lunches actually–and ended up creating this spectacular work of art.
In today’s episode we find out about this happy group and that beautiful riverside restaurant they’re clearly enjoying. And I’ll tell you a pretty funny story about how Duncan Phillips was able to get this stunner for his new modern art museum, the Phillips Collection in Washington DC.
If you want to follow along, you can find it on the museum’s site
SHOW NOTES
“A Long Look” themes are “Easy” by Ron Gelinas https://youtu.be/2QGe6skVzSs and “At the Cafe with You” by Onion All Stars https://pixabay.com/users/onion_all_stars-33331904/
Episode music
“Parisian” by Kevin MacLeod
https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
From Blue Dot Sessions:
“Via Verre” https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/306837
“Symphony 40 In G Minor” https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/306840
“Etude 9 Stefan” https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/306841
Artwork information
https://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/luncheon-boating-party
https://www.phillipscollection.org/event/2017-10-06-renoir-and-friends-luncheon-boating-party
“The Eye of Duncan Phillips: A collection in the making” by Duncan Philips and David W. Scott. 1999. Edited by Erika D. Passantino. Washington, DC: Phillips Collection in association with Yale University New Haven.
Sitters identified
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luncheon_of_the_Boating_Party
Holston papers
William H. Holston papers, 1915-1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Reel D-169 #1029-31
“Luncheon of the Boating Party” by Susan Vreeland
https://bookshop.org/p/books/luncheon-of-the-boating-party-susan-vreeland/11716075?ean=9780143113522&next=t
Maison Fournaise
https://www.maisonfournaise.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maison_Fournaise
Caillebotte episode
https://alonglookpodcast.com/08-skiffs-caillebotte
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to A Long Look! I’m your host, Karen Jackson
Did you know most people spend only a few seconds looking at works of art? But what happens if you slow down and take a long look? Join me while I take you thru what I see and discover while looking at a work of art for minutes instead of seconds. Then I’ll share the history, mystery, or controversy behind it!
Ready? Then let’s head to the Phillips Collection in Washington DC
MUSIC
Today I’m looking at Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre-Auguste Renoir If you want to follow along, you can find it at alonglookpodcast.com/lunch. This is a huge painting with a lot going on, so make yourselves comfortable!
So what do you first notice?
The kissy face a pretty young woman makes to her little black terrier. She holds it upright on a table seated on its hind legs with its front paws stretched towards her. She sits facing our right, wearing a long navy blue dress trimmed with cherry red with a frilly white neckline and cuffs. A straw hat sits low on her head with a curved brim topped with a burst of pumpkin-orange blossoms that frame her face.
Her name is Aline and she and her dog are part of a group of 14 men and women crowded onto a large terrace shaded by a coral and grey striped awning. They’re in their 20s or early 30s and stand or sit around a couple of tables on a sunny day.
They look like they’re having a great time and face every which way. Some are in profile, some have their backs to us, some lean on the tables, and they all look at each other as if about to speak.
Most of the women wear in navy or cobalt-blue gowns with frilly white neckline and cuffs. And the hats are fabulous.The brims curve up over their faces then down over the ears and they’re decorated with flowers, ribbons, feathers. Most of the men wear jackets and bowler hats but two of the guys are in sleeveless white t-shirts and straw hats. They are the boaters.
Renoir’s arranged everybody into a rough triangle. It starts with the point at Aline’s hat on the left and becomes more crowded as it expand outwards to the right. They’re all layered over each other, we really only seem most of them from the waist up.
Aline is one of four people around the table closest to us that stretches across the lower half of the canvas. It’s draped with a white cloth with a small keg, a few wine bottles, half empty glasses and napkins crumpled on empty plates spread across. Luscious green pears and purple and red grapes spill out of a bowl in the center of the table.
One of the boaters sits across from her, straddling his chair while the woman next to him tilts her head to gaze at him with a little smile. She has an adorable soft white cap with thin blue stripes perched on her head that slouches to one side. It reminds me of a tea cozy! A second man in a white jacket with thin stripes leans over the two, maybe trying to get in on the conversation?
Standing behind Aline to our left, is another boater, a tall, muscular man with red hair and beard. He almost fills the height of the canvas as he leans back on a wooden railing. He’s turned his head away from us to look over the group.
This is Alphonse and his sister Alphonsine also leans on the railing further up the canvas toward the back of the terrace.
She wears a straw hat and sailor’s shirt and looks pretty relaxed with her chin propped in one hand and her other arm draped over the railing. She gives a little smile to a man seated at the table next to her in the middle of the scene. He’s turned his back to us to give her his full attention. A woman across the table from him drinks from a raised glass that almost covers her face. We can barely see the last person at the table. There’s just a guy’s face peeking out behind the shoulder of the man standing at the front table.
Everybody else stands along the back of the terrace. Two men in the upper left seem to chat. One of them wears a black coat and top hat. Seems a little formal for a summer lunch, doesn’t it?
The last group in the upper right is a knot of two men and a fashionably dressed woman wearing black gloves and feathered hat. A guy in a t-shirt and straw hat wraps his arm tightly around her waist as she holds her hands up to either side of her face. It’s hard to tell if she’s trying to cover her ears or keep her hat from blowing off. There’s definitely a breeze fluttering the scalloped edge of the awning.
A mass of leafy trees painted with short strokes of celery, moss, and emerald green wraps around the back and left side of the terrace, filling the space behind the crowd. As my eye followed the trees back to the left side I suddenly caught a glimpse of sailboats on a river. They’re just visible in a gap between Alphonse and his sister, framed by treetops and flapping awning.
So who are all these happy people?
MUSIC
They’re all Renoir’s friends who he invited (over and over again) to pose for him on the terrace of La Maison Fournaise. The restaurant sits along the banks of the Seine in Chatou, a town outside Paris and the terrace was on the 2nd floor overlooking the river. It was owned by Alphonse and Alphonsine’s family and they helped run it.
Just like now, city folks loved to escape to the country for the day and this was a popular spot. It was only about a half hour train ride from Paris and rented rowboats. That’s what the guys in t-shirts and straw hats are dressed for and so is Alphonsine.
The others are a mix of actors, journalists, a writer, a banker, a former military officer, and other artists, including Renoir’s good friend Gustave Caillebotte. He’s the boater at Aline’s table! BTW, guys being sleeveless in public was kind of risque back then, If you want to know more, check out the episode on Caillebotte I did a few years ago. I’ll leave a link in show notes.
What makes this so stunning is not only is it huge, it’s about 6 ft wide by 4 ft tall, but Renoir basically rolled three paintings into one–a group portrait, a still life, and a landscape. The still life of all the stuff on Aline’s table is amazing. He’s left ruby red dregs of wine in the glasses and little touches of white on all the shiny glassware, everything sparkles. And because he’s an Impressionist, of course, the shirts and tablecloth aren’t just white. They’re tinged with blue and teal and lavender. The whole scene is just saturated with color.
It’s life-sized so when you stand in front of it, it’s like you’re on the terrace, part of the party!
What I loved finding out was these are the people who stuck by him during the lean years as he struggled to get his career off the ground. Impressionism was still controversial, so it was really hard to for him to sell his work but they encouraged and supported him and promoted him.
The cool thing is almost all of them have been identified, which is unusual. I’ll provide a link. One sweet note is that Aline was Aline Charigot whom he later married!
And it looks like Maison Fournaise continues! It was renovated in 1990 and now is a restaurant and museum.
In 1923, “Luncheon” was literally at the top of Duncan Phillips’s list of masterworks he wanted for his new modern art museum. It would be one of many he’d buy that would show where modern art came from.
He saw it for the first time in 1911 on a trip to Europe when it was owned by the well-known art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. But he really got interested when it came to New York in 1923 for an exhibition at Durand-Ruel’s gallery.
Now, the rest of the story comes from the papers of William H. Holston, the gallery dealer who sold it to him.
Paul’s son Joseph ran the gallery and was adamant the paintings in the exhibition were NOT for sale. But Holston was pretty sure if he could get someone to offer the right price, he’d change his mind.
So when Duncan came in one day and was clearly interested, Holston ended up persuading him to pay $120,000 for it. This was astonishing because the previous record for a Renoir was $30,000. But Holston believed that amount guaranteed the family would sell and no one would outbid him.
There’s a great scene where Duncan’s in the gallery and Joseph has just found out about these negotiations. Holston says Joseph comes “flying down in the elevator and screamed the pictures were not for sale, not for sale, not for sale.” But when Holston laid out the numbers, he accepted Duncan’s offer.
Plus Durand-Ruel had said he’d only let the painting leave France if it went to a museum. So this gave a lot of legitimacy to Duncan and his plans. It proved the- painting wouldn’t end up in some private collection the public would never see.
Holston said 120, the site says he paid $125,000. Either way, Duncan knew it was worth every penny. He told his treasurer that the Gallery now owned one of the greatest paintings in the world. He called it Renoir’s masterpiece and said it was so famous it would draw people “thousands of miles” to visit his new museum. He was absolutely right. And to his immense credit, when another collector tried to buy it from him, offering a blank check, he refused.
OUTRO:
A fantastic book by Susan Vreeland called “Luncheon of the Boating Party” was a big inspiration for this episode. You should definitely check it out. And I’d like to thank the staff at the Phillips Collection and Archives for American Art for their help.
I hope you’ll try out a long look on your next museum visit! Just take a little time and let the art reveal itself.
You can find links to today’s information in the show notes at alonglookpodcast.com and in most podcast apps. If you don’t want to miss an episode, you can find player links on the site or just hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you listen!
And if you’re a fan, please help by spreading the word! Just hit that share button or send your family, friends, colleagues and followers over to alonglookpodcast.com.
Thanks for joining me!
Discover more from A Long Look Podcast
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.